The Banquet at the Center of the Maze

Katherine Quevedo

 

Who has set me a place

alone at this rough-hewn table,

 

where stone walls meet

in their mossy fineries?

 

Who fashioned the golden platter

of shieldlike hammered metal?

 

Who plucked the poisonous

mazefruits and arrayed them,

 

glistening like oils and perfumes,

in “bottles” of their own dewy skin?

 

Who furnished the bronze paring knife

to slice the mazefruits tissue-thin,

 

and why do I picture my own layers cut

translucent, epidermis and everything below?

 

Most of all,

who carved my name into the table’s wood?

 

 

***

Katherine Quevedo (she/her/hers) was born and raised just outside of Portland, Oregon, where she works as an analyst and lives with her husband and two sons. Her poetry has appeared in Sidequest, NonBinary Review, Songs of Eretz Poetry Review, The Decadent Review, and elsewhere, and she received an honorable mention in the 2020 Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest. Find her at http://www.katherinequevedo.com.